The total of 1,534 season ticket holders that the club has this season – more than 400 down on a year ago and 1,200 lower than in the 2014-15 campaign – does not make for pretty reading, but putting the figure out in the open should hopefully act as a wake-up call and persuade the club to entice more fans through the turnstiles.

The reasons for such a drastic drop in sales at Yeovil Town can be pinned down to two key areas.

Yeovil’s poor end to last season, which saw them win just three of their final 27 league matches, was the worst possible run that could have unfolded at a time when the club was trying to persuade supporters to renew their season tickets.

This, when taken as the culmination of four seasons in which the club has gone from the Championship to the bottom half of League Two, means that it can be no surprise that less people are attending matches.

Yeovil Town entered the EFL in 2003 (Image: Tom Sandberg/Pinnacle)

The second reason for the drop can be put down to a growing disconnect between the club’s board and certain sections of the fanbase. Many supporters have actively taken to social media to say that they will not attend matches unless there are changes to the club’s ownership.

When you consider that it is likely to be the more dedicated fans who form such strong opinions about off-the-field matters, and therefore season ticket holders, this will also knock more numbers off the final figure.

Efforts to improve other areas such as the ease of buying tickets and improvements to the matchday experience are ongoing and have taken a clear step forward since the arrival of David Mills as supporter director, but this has come too late to stop those who had already made up their minds not to take out a season ticket this year.

What the club needs to do, from top to bottom, is recognise why fans are no longer coming to Huish Park at the levels that they used to, and work on persuading them to come back.

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Ticket bundles are a good start, as was the meal deal on offer for the games against Cheltenham and Morecambe this week, but this needs to be the tip of the iceberg.

More matchday offers, better marketing and advertising of the club, especially outside of Yeovil, and the continuing fine efforts of the media team in promoting the team through social media will hopefully also make more of a difference.

The key thing, however, is for the club to be more open with the supporters about boardroom matters.

Fans are the lifeblood of any club, and they therefore should be told whether the land at Huish Park has been secured by a legal charge. When independent supporters’ groups such as the Glovers Trust ask questions of the ownership, those questions – where reasonable – should be answered first time rather than it taking multiple attempts to get proper answers.

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It is not always easy to be so open when things are not going swimmingly, but as long as the club is transparent about where things stand and shows that it has a clear plan for how to fix them – as long as showing a willingness to listen to supporters – then they will at least gain the trust of the supporters.

Results on the pitch will also make a difference over time. If the team starts winning, then it is only natural that support will come flooding back.

But that will not fix the whole problem. The club needs to be willing to put the hard graft in and actively encourage fans to come back, rather than sit by and hope that people will continue to turn up.

Clarification from the club

Yeovil Town have seven points from their opening six league matches (Image: Gareth Davies/Pinnacle)

On Saturday evening, a draft version of the matchday programme for the game against Cheltenham surfaced on social media showing a different season ticket sales figure to the one that appeared in the final version.

The official figure given by the club was 1,534, but an earlier version of the programme had the number as 1,391.

This occurred due to a production error, and although there was some talk about the issue on Facebook and Twitter last week, there is no reason to believe that the figure of 1,534 is anything but genuine.